-- By SudiTasissa - 26 Apr 2018

The Bumpy Ride:First Year of Law School

I came to law school heavily influenced by my background. After my family and I moved to the United States, we settled in Maryland. I attended middle and high school in Prince George's County, a community with a low socioeconomic status that continues to experience disinvestment. The majority of my classmates were either like me, immigrants, or they came from broken homes whose parents were working two or three jobs to support their families.

It was only after I left my high school, High Point High School, that I fully understood that the counties education system was severely lacking. During my first year of college, experiencing quality education with abundant resources, it became apparent why most of my classmates did not make it to college or why they fell between the cracks of the system. The injustice to these students was so open and obvious, I often questioned why I failed to see it when I was there or why there was little action taken to improve the education. While I didn't know how or in what capacity, I knew I wanted to increase these students access to quality education because if it were not for my mentors, who also wore many other hats as educators, advisors, and reinforcers, my presence here is unlikely.

Challenges of Staying Focused

With this in mind, I decided to attend law school. During my first year, I regrettably experience many distractions. But our class discussion on the effect of money was helpful in helping me digesting my temptations and refocusing me back to the initial reasons I came to law school. Currently, during the last few days of my first year of law school, I have a greater understanding of how I will use my legal education. I have narrowed the type of lawyer I want to be to in three different ways: first, I would like to focus on policy. I believe policy could have one of the most significant impacts on the opportunities available to students. For instance, if we are able to offer dual enrollment, students who want to attend college but consider it to be out of reach can at least have some exposure to higher education.

Second, I would like to work with organizations that are already working on similar issues and learn from their experiences. This is especially true for organizations working to get students interested in STEM programs (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). While in High Point, we had many wonderful teachers, but the STEM teachers lacked the proper resources to engage their students in these subjects. Learning STEM can increase the choices available to students and eliminate some barriers to opportunity. Lastly, I would like to mentor at least five students a year with the goal of having each student attend higher education and graduate with a degree. Mentoring students will not only allow me to work with students that are currently enrolled in these schools but it will also help me understand the interests, needs, and realities of the students and schools. In other words, the students will enable me to have a greater understanding of the impact of policy changes on the quality of their education.

Other Intersts

While these are the reasons I came to law school, during my first year, I have also developed an interest in reforming our prison system. While sending people to prison is not always the answer, by improving the rehabilitation goal of our prison systems, we can at least reduce recidivism by assuring that people coming out of our prison system are able to continue their lives in an independent and fulfilling manner. This could be done by emulating some parts of the Norwegian prison system and offering better education, better mental health programs, and even financial literacy skills.

Norway comes out of nowhere here. Maybe it would be good to link to a reference so the reader understands why Norway?

Doubts and The Road Ahead

Admittedly, it's difficult to think about these issues without some frustration: the few years I have worked for Maryland State Legislature have thought me that his work will not be easy and seeing results will require patience. Despite this frustration, I am motivated by my past experiences and eager to work with people who share the same objectives as I do. This chapter in my life has underscored the many challenges our school systems continue to face, and the reality that we have much more to do to promote equal opportunity among our students. In the meantime, I have joined Education Policy and Law Society in order to learn from my fellow students and other professionals who have worked on education reform.

One route to improvement is merely technical: proofreading and editing for grammar, spelling, etc. Your habits of precision help not only you, but also everyone you help, because you hand that regard for details down.

To talk about education in Prince George's without mentioning what it's like in Montgomery is to leave half the story untold. How people fall through the cracks in America has also much to do with how those who don't are buoyed by the money of their parents, who "naturally" prefer their own children drastically over the children of others, particularly other others. Education is the redistribution of knowledge, so if knowledge is wealth and power.... A route to improving the substance of this draft is to remove some words (you don't need to define STEM if you can make a link, surely, for example), in order to add some that will deepen your social analysis without making anything longer.

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